A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

“Where . . . ?” Yancey managed, eventually, but Morrow just shook his head.

“Seems somewhat familiar,” he offered, at last. “But . . .”

Behind them, still aloft, Pargeter hovered a foot above the ground for one vertiginous moment more, before starting at last to sink. He touched down bootheels-first and smoothed down his finery, wiping all hint of battle-marks away, before marching right past them both, making for the canyon’s narrow channel.

“Well?” he asked, impatient. “Two of you comin’, or what?”

“You . . . ain’t minded to rest?” Morrow called back.

“No time, no need.” Pargeter snapped his fingers, sheathing them in lightning—checking he’d regained full control of his arcane faculties?—then snapped again, to banish it. “We’re in the hill country, near as not to Splitfoot’s; ten minutes should see us on their doorstep, well outta harm’s way. So let’s us stop dickin’ ’round, and—”

But here he froze, reorienting: seemed to sideslip distance, suddenly back at Morrow’s side, both guns levelled. Morrow turned too, Yancey following after, as a lone figure stepped carefully from the scrub. Felt her jaw drop at the sight, unladylike.

“Mister . . . Grey?”

“Truth told? Not entirely.” The young man she’d known as Grey adjusted his hat and smiled, looking far beyond weary. To Morrow: “’Lo, Ed.”

Morrow nodded back. Tonelessly: “. . . Frank.”

Pargeter cocked both guns, probably pretty much for conver-sational emphasis alone. “Was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The extra weight I felt, comin’ out here. Didn’t even feel you grab on—how’d you do that?”

Mister “Grey” indicated Yancey, with a wry smile. “Tryin’ to keep her from getting pulled along, mostly,” he admitted, “though that didn’t exactly take, I guess.”

“Looks like.” The guns didn’t waver. “So—you know Ed and Ed knows you, but I don’t know you from sheep-shit; in my book, all that means there’s only one thing you can be. Care to prove me wrong?”

Frank sighed, shook his head. “Think you well know how I can’t, Pargeter.”

He locked eyes with Morrow, passing some silent signal; in return, Morrow took a deep breath, eyebrows canting in surrender. “Yeah okay, all right. Chess—Miz Col—”

“Yancey,” she corrected, quickly, unsure she’d ever be ready to hear either maiden or married name again. “Call me Yancey, please . . . Edward.”

Which last addition sent things rocketing straight into the realm of awkward-forward, not that Morrow let himself be seen to notice.

“Yancey—allow me to introduce Agent Frank Geyer, of the Pinkerton Detective Service Agency. Sent here to bring us in, most likely.”

Grey—Geyer—smiled again, this time more widely. “Not . . . entirely, no.”

A pause ensued. Yancey glanced at her feet, just in time to see her wind-chased bridal veil go tumbling away along the canyon floor, smeared deep in bloody dirt, brief as some lost snow-ghost. And felt her past slip along with it, leaving her just another woman in a once-white dress.

I have to be someone different now, she told herself, resolving not to let herself think too deep about the choices she had to make from this point on, lest she quibble to make them at all. Someone neither Pa nor Uther would recognize—me either, in days gone by. Do what I have to, in order to make sure that thing which laid them both low pays its dues. Fight fire with fire. So . . .

Might as well start now as later, she supposed. If only for complete and total lack of any other option.

“Well, then,” she said. “Better tell us all about that, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Geyer replied.

Interstice

Top headline in the Californian of San Francisco, for the first week of June, 1867:

STARTLING NEWS FROM OVER THE BORDER!

The Earthquake that Levelled Mexico City

Has Also Derailed Partisan Siege Designed to Oust Mexico’s Hapsburg Emperor

Offering Aid, Napoleon III’s Troops Return